Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Maybe we should elect this guy ...
... Co-pilot Putin helps put out Russia's wildfires. Can't say he's not hands-on.
Hmm ...
... The 15 Most Overrated Contemporary American Writers (PHOTOS). (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I disagree about John Ashbery.
I disagree about John Ashbery.
Amos Oz
On the suggestion of my brother, I recently took up - and completed - Amos Oz's collection of extended stories, The Hill of Evil Counsel. Set in Jerusalem in the waning days of the British Mandate, Oz's tales weave a complex tapestry, one which has a great deal to say about Israel's transition toward nationhood. As this was my first exposure to Oz's prose, I must say: I was impressed. Oz is a writer's writer, an artist in complete command of language and its nuances, its intricacies. The last word, therefore, is reserved for him:
"Dear Mina, I shall not use the word 'blame.' You are not to blame for what you do to me in my dreams. But perhaps you are responsible, up to a point." (1995 ed., 207)
Close reading ...
... On Myers on Baber.
Scientific training does not necessarily bestow a capacity for philosophical reasoning, as Richard Dawkins has repeatedly demonstrated.
Scientific training does not necessarily bestow a capacity for philosophical reasoning, as Richard Dawkins has repeatedly demonstrated.
Monday, August 09, 2010
I think this is wondetful ...
... My faith is an informed choice. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
People in any case overestimate the value of truth and underestimate the difficulty of arriving at it. There are a great many truths in which I have absolutely no interest – truths about the lifecycle of Ctenocephalides felis, (the common cat flea) or the extensive body of truths about the condition of my teeth that my dentist imposes on me. I see no reason why I should bother with these truths or make a point of believing them.I think that first sentence is brilliant.
Period piece ...
... H. G. Wells, the futurity man.
This review takes no note of the despair -- genuine despair -- of his last work, Mind at the End of Its Tether.
". . . taking almost anything as a starting-point and letting my thoughts play about it, there would presently come out of the darkness, in a manner quite inexplicable, some absurd or vivid little incident more or less relevant to that initial nucleus. Little men in canoes upon sunlit oceans would come floating out of nothingness, incubating the eggs of prehistoric monsters unawares; violent conflicts would break out amidst the flower-beds of suburban gardens; I would discover I was peering into remote and mysterious worlds ruled by an order logical indeed but other than our common sanity."
This week's batch ...
... of TLS Lettters: Arthur Koestler and women, Young MacNeice, Noises on the deck, and more!
Life after death ...
... 50 Famous Books That Were Posthumously Published. (My blogging partner, Jesse Freedman, just alerted me to this.)
Interesting ...
... Entry from an unkept diary.
I also found Mildred insufferable and Philip's obsession with her baffling when I read Of Human Bondage. But I have certainly known people in relationships like theirs. And I think that once you put aside Mildred's and Albert's commonness, what you are left with is the obsession, and that is what I think readers glom onto. Most of us, I think, have had at one time or another -- in my own case more than once -- what for want of a better phrase I shall call hopeless crushes. And Maugham is very good at depicting the irrationality and misery that invariably accompany them.
A splendid piece ...
... Bryan writes of Poetry and the English Imagination. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Here is Bryan's review of John Ashbery's A Worldly Country.
Here is Bryan's review of John Ashbery's A Worldly Country.
Memory ...
... Chris Knight fondly remembers his former teacher and Booker winner Stanley Middleton. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Outstanding ...
... The Conversion of David Mamet.
The only unexpected thing about this conclusion is that it took the author of American Buffalo (1975), Glengarry Glen Ross (1984), and Speed-the-Plow (1988) so long to reach it. In these hard-headed plays, which established him as a major voice in American theater, Mamet respectively portrays small-time crooks, unethical real-estate agents, and ambitious Hollywood executives as engaged in identically savage battles for power over one another. His foul-mouthed characters behave like scorpions in a bottle, determined to sting or be stung. They have no past or future, only the unremittingly bleak present, though they somehow manage to entertain us—if that is the word—because of the manic energy with which they do their frenzied dances of death.
Thought for the day ...
Words are men's daughters, but God's sons are things.- Izaak Walton, born on this date in 1593
Sunday, August 08, 2010
Who knew?
... Audrey Hepburn 'couldn't sing and couldn't act', says Emma Thompson.
Am I the only one who thinks Emma Thompson is a dimwit?
Am I the only one who thinks Emma Thompson is a dimwit?
Sad news ...
... In Memoriam: Thomas Molnar (1921–2010). (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I met Thomas Molnar a number of times years ago and had several wonderful conversations with him. He was brilliant man. And yes, we did talk about Teilhard, whom I understood differently -- though I also understood that there was much in what Molnar had to say about him.
I met Thomas Molnar a number of times years ago and had several wonderful conversations with him. He was brilliant man. And yes, we did talk about Teilhard, whom I understood differently -- though I also understood that there was much in what Molnar had to say about him.
Labels ...
... The PICTURE: Midcult Revisited. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Van Wyck Brooks was one of the first to seriously discuss the terms "highbrow" and "lowbrow." But he deplored their use, rightly sensing the snobbery that underlies them. I remember when Macdonald's essay came out. I have never found it entirely persuasive. The Old Man and the Sea is hardly a bad a book, and Our Town is actually a pretty impressive play. When you consider how much of what Macdonald would have regarded as masscult -- films like Casablanca or Singin' in the Rain -- is now thought highly of as art, and that one of the novels he savagely denounced as midcult -- James Gould Cozzens's By Love Possessed -- is in fact much better than Macdonald realized, then one can only conclude that Macdonald himself was perhaps in the grip of his own brand of snobbery. A true artist can turn his hand to practically anything and make art out of it. Mozart would have had no problem writing film scores or, for that matter, tunes for advertising. And they would have been catchy tunes, I'll bet.
It's been a hot summer ...
... in these parts. But a cold winter elsewhere:
... Argentina Has Colder Winter Than Antartica, Spurring Record Power Imports.
... 1 Million Fish Dead in Bolivian Ecological Disaster.
... Argentina Has Colder Winter Than Antartica, Spurring Record Power Imports.
... 1 Million Fish Dead in Bolivian Ecological Disaster.
Thought for the day ...
I do not know how anyone can live without some small place of enchantment to turn to.- Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, born on this date in 1896
Saturday, August 07, 2010
Conversation ...
... Hitchens Talks to Goldblog About Cancer and God (with a special guest appearance by Martin Amis). (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Making the visible possible ...
... `Maintained in Being'. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
More on Helen Pinkerton: After 50 Years' Cultivation, a Harvest of Poetry.
Post bumped.
More on Helen Pinkerton: After 50 Years' Cultivation, a Harvest of Poetry.
Post bumped.
Thought for the day ...
The hard part of writing at all is sitting your ass down in a chair and writing it. There's always something better to do, like I've got an interview, sharpening the pencils, trimming the roses. There's always something better to do. Going to a writer's club?3- Jerry Pournelle, born on this date in 1933
Friday, August 06, 2010
A censorious dynamic ...
... We’ll only listen to you if you’ve been peer-reviewed.
Well, that's what happens if your aim is consensus ("group solidarity in sentiment and belief") rather than a sound understanding of a problem.
One of Pickett and Wilkinson’s severest critics – the non-peer-reviewed Christopher Snowdon, author of The Spirit Level Delusion – is taken aback. ‘This displays an eagerness to close down debate and hide behind the supposed gatekeepers of knowledge’, he tells spiked. ‘Some people who don’t understand what peer review is seem determined to present it as some arbiter of truth’, he continues. ‘But it just means a study is fit for publication or is not obviously fabricated.
Well, that's what happens if your aim is consensus ("group solidarity in sentiment and belief") rather than a sound understanding of a problem.
Let us consider
... The Evils of Evolution. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
There is a part of me -- a part that seems to be exerting increasing influence on my thinking and feeling -- that causes me to wonder if we simply do not know -- indeed cannot know -- what is going on in life. Not that what is going on has no point, but that we can never figure it out, that no one ever has, nor ever will, and that we just have to live and see what, if anything, happens when it's over for us. More and more my prayers address this fundamental uncertainty. But I do pray -- mostly for forgiveness.
Bryan ...
... On Satire. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
It seems to me that if Machiavelli was right and relations among nations are governed by the law of the jungle, then it becomes both easy to pass moral judgment on the behavior of government operatives in their dealings with other countries and also largely beside the point. The nature of the problem would seem to mandate a kind of immoralism. The satirist, I suspect -- and the journalist as well -- if charged with the duties of the government operatives would likely behave in much the same manner that they so worthy of ridicule.
Glenn poses a relevant question.
Glenn poses a relevant question.
Something to think about ...
... The Regulator Franchise, or the Alan Blinder Problem. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Tell me if you understand the problem in its full simplicity: former regulators and public officials who were employed by the citizens to represent their best interests can use the expertise and contacts acquired on the job to benefit from glitches in the system upon joining private employment -- law firms, etc.
Think about it a bit further: the more complex the regulation, the more bureaucratic the network, the more a regulator who knows the loops and glitches would benefit from it later, as his regulator edge would be a convex function of his differential knowledge. This is a franchise. (Note that this franchise is not limited to finance; the car company Toyota hired former U.S. regulators and used their "expertise" to handle investigations of its car defects).
For all you hockey fans ...
... The Hockey Sweater – All Things Hockey.
I'm not terribly into hockey -- Philly didn't have a team when I was growing up -- but Judith is a passionate fan.
I'm not terribly into hockey -- Philly didn't have a team when I was growing up -- but Judith is a passionate fan.
Thought for the day ...
Do not fear lest you should meditate too much upon Him and speak of Him in an unworthy way, providing you are led by faith. Do not fear lest you should entertain false opinions of Him so long as they are in conformity with the notion of the infinitely perfect Being.- Nicolas Malebranche, born on this date in 1638
Thursday, August 05, 2010
Silver-screen editor ...
... The return of a man called Perkins. (Hat tip, Paul Davis.)
Perkins also appears in the 1983 film Cross Creek, where was played by Malcolm McDowell.
Perkins also appears in the 1983 film Cross Creek, where was played by Malcolm McDowell.
The perils of age ...
... Night thoughts.
I still find, usually, when I can't bring something to mind as quickly as I would like, that telling myself "it will come to me" works. Though earlier this summer I could not for the life of me think of the name of a flower in my garden - alyssum, as it happened. The Greeks, of course, thought that forgetting was a blessing. I'm guessing my memory won't always be as sharp as it usually has been, but am hoping it will remain serviceable to the end. But who the hell knows? I will, eventually.
Ishiguro
I came upon the film adaptation last night of Ishiguro's Remains of the Day. I hadn't thought for quite some time about that novel, but wow, after watching Anthony Hopkins (for the second or third time), I was again singing Ishiguro's praises. Mesmerizing, masterful, Remains of the Day presents a powerful account of tradition, history, and that complex thing we call loyalty.
Thought for the day ...
- All lovely things will have an ending,
- All lovely things will fade and die,
- And youth, that's now so bravely spending,
- Will beg a penny by and by.
- Conrad Aiken, born on this date 1889
Wednesday, August 04, 2010
Perhaps ...
... Better Science Through God? (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Well, an atheist may have unraveled the Big Bang, but a Benedictine monk discovered it.
Well, an atheist may have unraveled the Big Bang, but a Benedictine monk discovered it.
Not as a god ...
... but as a god might be. (BTW, just because the sun appears to us to be an immense and distant sphere of exploding gases, there's always the possibility that such is what a supernatural person might look like to us. Just a thought.) I figure it's only fair to give the other side a hearing from time to time. And I find Pat Condell entertaining, even though I disagree with him on a lot of things.
Christopher Hitchens ...
... on the Topic of Cancer.
Myself, I love the imagery of struggle. I sometimes wish I were suffering in a good cause, or risking my life for the good of others, instead of just being a gravely endangered patient. Allow me to inform you, though, that when you sit in a room with a set of other finalists, and kindly people bring a huge transparent bag of poison and plug it into your arm, and you either read or don’t read a book while the venom sack gradually empties itself into your system, the image of the ardent soldier or revolutionary is the very last one that will occur to you. You feel swamped with passivity and impotence: dissolving in powerlessness like a sugar lump in water.
Thought for the day ...
In a sense it might even be said that our failure is to form habits: for, after all, habit is relative to a stereotyped world, and meantime it is only the roughness of the eye that makes two persons, things, situations, seem alike.- Walter Pater, born on this date in 1839
Tuesday, August 03, 2010
Sorry I missed this ...
... especially since I'm usually there a couple of times a week (the Reading Terminal Market, not Brindisi): Brindisi. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Judith's picks ...
... Outstanding: Garry Thomas Morse, Ken Norris & Jack Spicer. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Hooked ...
... "Let us have wine and women, mirth and laughter / Sermons and soda water the day after." (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Sermons and Soda-Water is a wonderful book. O'Hara excelled in the novella. The second one eapecially, "Imagine Kissing Pete," is extraordinary.
Sermons and Soda-Water is a wonderful book. O'Hara excelled in the novella. The second one eapecially, "Imagine Kissing Pete," is extraordinary.
My latest column ...
... The political class thinks of itself as the ruling class.
In the meantime, take a look at your tax dollars at work. Note that this bill was supposed to stimulate the economy, which it obviously has not done. And small wonder. This is the usual pork-barrel crap that seems about the only thing our Congressional doofuses are able to manage.
Thought for the day ...
War makes strange giant creatures out of us little routine men who inhabit the earth.- Ernie Pyle, born on this date in 1900
Monday, August 02, 2010
Sunday, August 01, 2010
Mark your calendar ...
... August 21st- Poets on the Ryerss Porch.
I'll be in the mountains by then, doing tai chi and and scribbling haiku.
I'll be in the mountains by then, doing tai chi and and scribbling haiku.
Smoke ...
... meet fire. Glenn Reynolds on JournoList: Controversy proves collusion among liberal journalists.
In "The Appearance of Impropriety," my former University of Tennessee College of Law colleague Peter Morgan and I noted that sociologists like Erving Goffman think that every functioning society needs a "backstage" where people can let their hair down and speak without observing social proprieties. But journalists have been destroying that backstage for everyone else for decades. Why should they be permitted to keep one, when no one else is?
Boundless ego ...
... raging artistic ambition and zero ability: Enter The Room ("prime contender for the title Worst Movie Ever Made").
Thought for the day ...
Irony differentiates. Cynicism never does.- Paul Horgan, born on this date in 1903
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